Today we’d like to introduce you to Miranda Craig.
Hi Miranda, we’d love for you to start by introducing yourself.
Since early childhood I have been a dabbler, interested in almost anything I can get my hands on. While that can be really fun during my free time, I found myself very anxious about graduating high school because I couldn’t think of any jobs that would give me the variety I loved. My parents teased me that I never retained interests for long, and I was terrified of being bored for forty hours a week for the rest of my life.
I moved from Washington state to Michigan for college, and I kept trying new things. I double majored in Biology and Songwriting and Recording, minored in Spanish, and earned a Masters of Divinity at a small seminary. Meanwhile, I contemplated being a professor, a middle school teacher, a therapist, a regenerative farmer, a church songwriter, and a pastor.
By the time I finished seminary I knew none of those jobs was the right fit. Seminary made it clear to me how much I care about building community spaces where people can connect and grow. I believe that people are created in God’s image and therefore have an inherent dignity, and I wanted my daily work to reflect that and to empower people to live their best lives. But through a number of painful church internships I discovered there might be too many barriers for me to fully embody that work at a church. I wanted to be able to support the growth and affirm the dignity of people who didn’t share my views or feel comfortable in religious spaces. I wanted to treat everybody as a valuable voice in the room, even if our values differ. It was around that time that I took a pottery class and the studio became my second home, opening up the idea that arts organizations might serve as a space for community development.
Chasing that idea through a number of temporary and part-time jobs, I eventually found CultureWorks, where I’m now the Program Director. CultureWorks is a non-profit that offers after-school art classes for students grades 6-12. All of our classes are free, and we provide transportation from local public schools in hopes of eliminating any barriers to participation. Knowing I wanted to do community development through the arts, I was really drawn to the mission here: Cultivating Creativity, Building Community, and Empowering Students. After being here for a few years I feel comfortable saying that I landed at my dream job.
I love when the needs of a community and the needs of individuals overlap for mutual benefit; I discovered a job where I get to teach my favorite hobbies to teens, provide mentorship, support teachers, supervise interns, and learn new things like grant writing and fundraising. In other words, I am never bored. And teens in the Holland area who need a welcoming space can dive deep into new interests, make friends, and learn alongside adults who care about them.
I’m incredibly grateful to be hanging out in this little corner of the universe right now. Each day I get to interact with a lot of amazing people from my community, especially the teens who take classes. My students are kind, intelligent, funny, and wise. They give me so much hope for how inclusive and connected our communities can become, and they teach me new things about art, pop culture, lingo, and what it means to be human.
We all face challenges, but looking back would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?
I’m not sure any road is ever smooth. I think a lot of who I am today was shaped by my love and admiration for my mom and the difficulty of coping with her death while I was still in high school. Experiencing grief while I was still young, and recalling all of the adults who stepped in to make sure I had love and support has had a profound impact on the way I think about caring for young people today.
Early on in my time at CultureWorks we hit a big financial roadblock, reaching a point where we had less than one month of cash on hand. We’re a small organization and it can be difficult to fundraise and run quality programs at the same time. Whereas most companies sell their product to paying customers, we essentially have two sets of clientele to whom we have to market: donors who fund our work, and the students who actually take our classes. We survived through that rough patch. This summer held similar fears as an early version of the MI state budget had completely eliminated Out of School Time funding and Arts and Culture funding. We poured a lot of energy into advocating, and the final budget included both of those items. We’re really grateful to know that our funding should be okay through the next year.
The work I do, while fulfilling, is not always easy; each one of my students has their own life experiences that they carry into the room, and art often opens the door for honest conversations about the difficult things in life. It’s a privilege to hear my students’ stories and to celebrate and grieve alongside them, but there are days when the burdens we carry together are pretty heavy. It’s a reminder to me that we still have a long way to go in making our communities places where all people can flourish.
Thanks for sharing that. So, maybe next you can tell us a bit more about your work?
I always felt like a bit of a weirdo for not being able to hone in on a single interest or area of expertise, but that has turned out to be a huge asset in the place where I am now. At CultureWorks I’m able to share skills in ceramics, knitting, crochet, songwriting, and embroidery with my students. My biology degree comes in handy when we teach botanical illustration classes. My seminary training helped equip me for public speaking and listening well when students are having a hard day. I get to remind students that even if art remains “just a hobby” in their adulthood, it can still inform and enrich their lives in a number of ways. At the studio students are invited to integrate all the facets of their life in their art. They bring together their passion for conservation, their adoration of anime, their interest in engineering, their love of insects and their desire to connect with others. It makes for a really rich and multidisciplinary learning community.
How do you think about happiness?
I try to take pleasure in ordinary, everyday things so that each day has a measure of joy. I love the warmth of a cup of coffee in my hands in the morning. I enjoy the feeling of yarn in my fingers while I’m knitting. I like the smell and feel of soil when I’m gardening during the warmer months. I enjoy taking walks in places that have a lot of trees because it reminds me of home.
I think the thing that makes me most happy is shared experiences with people. I love sitting around a table with people I love to enjoy a meal together. I love when my students connect over the art that they are making, or a shared interest in something niche. I love when my church is singing loudly enough that you feel like a part of the whole rather than an individual in the pew. I experience something like holiness when I get to share a beautiful, connected experience with other people.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://thecultureworks.org
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thecultureworks
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/thecultureworks
- Other: https://open.spotify.com/artist/7dUPsQHxLBRMWhxmsaUBmY
